EMOTION AND MOTIVATION

Emotion and Motivation

Emotion and Motivation

Introduction

Motivations and emotions affect behavioral performance, but motivation can additionally lead to the formulation of concrete goal-achieving behavior, at least in humans, whereas emotions are concerned with modulating existing behaviors in support of current activity. In this regard, motivations might additionally invoke specific behaviors to accomplish more deliberative tasks or plans (e.g., strategies for obtaining food).

It is my view that motivations (and emotions) affect the underlying control of a cybernetic system by altering the underlying behavioral parameters of the agent, whether it is biological or artifactual, (i.e., a robot). Certain internal states, which are used to represent various motivation/emotional qualities, are maintained by processes that reflect the agent's time course through the environment as well as its perception of the immediate situation. Using this definition, it then becomes our goal, as roboticists, to design systems that can maintain this internal motivational state and use it to produce behavior in ways that are consistent with intelligent performance in the real world. Motivations/emotions provide two potential crucial roles for robotics:

1. Survivability: Emotions serve as one of the mechanisms to complete autonomy and that helps natural systems cope with the world. (Darwin, 1972) postulated that emotions serve to increase the survivability of a system. Often a critical situation does not allow time for deliberation, and emotions modulate the behavioral response of the agent directly.

2. Interaction: Many robots that are created to function in close proximity to people need to be able to relate to them in predictable and natural ways.

This is primarily a limitation of the human, whom we do not have the luxury of reprogramming. In order to make robots interact effectively and efficiently with people it is useful for them to react in ways that humans are familiar and comfortable with. This article will present a range of research results that attempts to address the issues above while spanning the phylogenetic complexity of various animal models: i.e., moving up the food chain. I first look at the lowly sowbug as a basis for incorporating motivation behavior, then move up to predatory insects, specifically the praying mantis. Moving into the realm of humans we then investigate intra-species behavior, the mother-child relationship, and then inter-species interaction in the relationship of a robotic dog with its owner. Finally I summarise a relatively complex model of motivations that includes multiple timescales formulated in terms of traits, attitudes, moods, and emotions. Hopefully the journey through these various biological entities and their robotic counterparts will help demonstrate a basis for commonality of emotion and motivation across all species, while simultaneously encouraging others to loosen their definitional belt a bit regarding just what emotions are.

Tolman's Schematic Sowbug and its Robotic Counterpart

Our first study looks at a psychological model of the behavior of a sowbug. Tolman introduced his concept of a schematic sowbug, which was a product of his earlier work on purposive behaviorism developed in the early 1920's. (Innis, 1999) states:

Initially, in Tolman's purposive behaviorism, behavior implied a performance, ...